Google loses legal battle over privacy violation
Google has lost a legal battle to drop a lawsuit accused of violating the privacy of millions of people by secretly tracking their internet usage.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said on Monday she found no evidence that users agreed to let Google collect information about what they viewed online because the Alphabet subsidiary did not explicitly tell them it would.
Privacy protection
David Boyce, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the $5 billion class action lawsuit, called the court’s decision “an important step in protecting the privacy of millions of Americans.”
Prosecutors said Google analytics, cookies and apps allow the Mountain View, California-based company to track their activities even when the Google Chrome browser is set to “incognito” and other browsers to “private” browsing.
“Potentially awkward things”
They added that this allowed Google to learn enough about their friends, hobbies, favorite products, shopping habits and “potentially nasty things” they were looking for online to become “an inexplicable mine of detailed and comprehensive information.”
The plaintiffs argued that there was a market for their data, Rogers said in a 36-document decision, citing a pilot program from Google that paid users $3 a day for their browsing history.
The lawsuit covers Google users effective June 1, 2016, seeking damages of at least $5,000 per user for violations of federal wiretapping and California privacy laws.
